School officer: Many roles, big responsibility
“I can turn into a mama bear really quick,” she said. “And I’ve made that decision that nobody is going to hurt my babies if I can help it.”
For millions of students, the first adult they see every day at school is not a teacher, or principal. It is a “school resource officer” like Revels, an oftenoverlooked role in law enforcement that is under the national glare like never before.
Their duties range from perking up sullen students to directing bus traffic to settling disputes to keeping an eye out for threats. It is that responsibility as the first line of defense that is getting the most attention, as questions swirl over whether the school resource officer at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., failed to do his job when he remained outside the school on Feb. 14 while a former student, Nikolas Cruz, shot 17 people to death inside.
The position, with its genial sounding name, is an unusual hybrid of counselor, educator and cop, and perhaps no other job better personifies America’s shifting ideas about schools, policing and safety.
Their numbers exploded during the community-oriented policing wave of the 1990s and even more after the Columbine High School shooting in 1999.
As the memory of that shooting faded and local budgets tightened, their ranks thinned in many places. Now there are calls for installing more of them in schools across the country, with new positions announced in a number of districts just this past week, even as the president wants to arm more teachers.
Scot Peterson, the Broward County deputy stationed at Stoneman Douglas High, has been called a “coward” by President Donald Trump and assailed by his own boss, Sheriff Scott Israel. But there also has been criticism over the years, including in Broward County, that school officers have been too aggressive, arresting students too quickly for infractions that traditionally warranted a mere trip to the principal’s office or perhaps a suspension.
In interviews, school officers around the country spoke of performing multiple adult roles, having to alternate between nurturing and authoritative, with a guiding philosophy known in the field as “the triad” — counselor, teacher, law enforcement officer.
“They have to be a mentor — a kind, caring, trusting adult, the nice police officer who will give you a high-five and ask you how your day is going,” said John McDonald, security chief for the Jefferson County, Colorado, school district, which includes Columbine High. “And very quickly they have to become a tactical cop. That switch is not for everybody. The ability to do that is very difficult.”
Officers were reluctant to judge Peterson’s actions before investigations were completed. But Amy Kingzett, one of seven school resource officers in Fargo, N.D. — one for every public middle and high school — said she expected some fine-tuning of tactics after the Parkland shooting.
“We want to make sure we do everything we can to continue those preparations and maybe learn from unfortunate situations of the past,” she said.
Mostly, though, their job is to keep order on campus and among adolescents whose fuses are not yet fully grown. Kingzett, 38,was in the cafeteria of a Fargo middle school last week when a fight broke out between a girl and a boy. It started with name-calling, but Kingzett could sense it escalating. As the bell rang and students streamed to their classes, she pulled aside the antagonists and just let them vent, using the listening skills she had learned as a negotiator on the police department’s SWAT team.
Crisis over. “It was one of those small victories you could tuck into your back pocket,” she said.